Targeting is an important tool in advertising. The recipient's attention is also an important consideration. Reaching a particular audience and having their attention during advertising message delivery is an obvious goal of any advertiser. A largely untapped medium for delivering advertising, and other message content such as news, sports, etc., is the wireless network communication medium.
A precious commodity in a wireless communication network, such as a cellular or PCS network, is network capacity. Most consumers are familiar with the value of capacity through billing plans which determine their monthly cost for having a handset access a network on the basis of usage minutes.
The primary use for a handset in a wireless communication network is that of a telephone. However, additional services are now being packaged in a handset, as the wireless communication network handset evolves into a multipurpose communication device. Paging functions, Internet communications, and two-way radio functions, are examples of functions that are becoming more common in wireless communication handsets. Messaging, the delivering of data content to a handset for delivery to the handset user, is an emerging function. Messaging might be used, for example, to deliver general interest information ranging from sports scores to stock quotes. The likely most important type of messaging content, though, would be promotional in nature.
Presently, there are two primary methods of pushing content, i.e., delivering messages, to wireless communication network handsets. A method called Short Message Service Cell Broadcast (SMSCB) is limited to the GSM (Global System for Mobile) cellular protocol. In SMSCB, messages are transmitted over the GSM network's control signal. Each SMSCB message is limited to 93 alphanumeric characters. A message is sent by the network operator to a selected group of network base stations for transmission to enabled handsets within their range. Some SMSCB messaging methods have been implemeted in Europe and the Middle East. In Germany, a SMSCB messaging service sends news messages ten times a day. In Lebanon, a network is used to send SMSCB messages in a daily schedule that includes advertising messages, weather messages, and traffic, financial, horoscope, sports and airport information messages. A second method, General Packet Radio Service (GPRS), is a nonvoice value added service in which information is sent and received across a wireless network. GPRS is supported in the GSM and TDMA (time division multiple access) protocols. GPRS shares the main signal with voice traffic, as opposed to the control signal used in SMSCB. Because the packets of message information in GPRS are separated into packets and transmitted in the fashion of voice traffic, the message length does not have the strict limits imposed by SMSCB. A cell broadcast in GPRS requires that the sender, rather than the receiver, initiate the message which terminates in the handset as opposed to the base stations. Typical wireless networks are set up to bill such a transaction to the receiver, resulting in the undesirable situation of having potentially unsolicited messaging being billed to the user of a handset. This is a primary reason that there is limited support in the industry for GPRS messaging.
Thus, there is a need for an improved messaging method for wireless communication networks which addresses some or all of the aforementioned drawbacks. It is an object of the invention to provide such an improved messaging method. It is a further object of the invention to make advertising broadcasts practical and desirable in a wireless communication network.